Free Captive- Veiled Desires by Clarissa Cartharn Page A

watching the stars fill the night sky. It had been a week since she could see the sky so clearly again. She never would have known how much she would miss it. The moon was in its fullest form. It shone like an illuminated cheese wheel in the dark.
    But she didn’t enjoy the small freedom she received since her imprisonment in Pakitika; since her attempted rape by a mad man. Perhaps, the threat of marriage to Adam Afridi had something to do with it.
    Her heart stabbed with pain. Had Freba betrayed her? When would she learn to stop investing her trust in the women around her? Freba had promised her help. Instead, she was now being held captive to marry a man she knew nothing about.  Except that people feared him, women obeyed him and a fucking psycho like Mateen, silently submitted to. This certainly made him more dangerous. Probably, more than she could ever imagine.
     
     
     

     
     
     
    Adam kept to the garage for most of the day. When darkness fell, he retreated to the common room where the men of Darul-Ilhaam ate, conversed and then slept.
    He pulled out a sleeping mat and placed it in a corner of the room with a good view of the night sky. It was only seven o’clock and already majority of the men had retired for the night. Being a terrorist and a smuggler wasn’t as exciting as the West made it out to be. In truth, this was life. Boring, dull nights where men spent most of their lives with other men rather than in the company of women- except of course when they were needed.
    Now it seemed he too would be joining the league of married men with wives who were never meant to be seen or heard but expected to perform in subservience to their demands. He sighed. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, he had never wanted admission into that club and he had successfully evaded it… until Nora.
    He shook his head and lay back on his mat, his hands tucked neatly under his head. He was avoiding Nora. He didn’t like to admit it though. Not even to himself. He wasn’t afraid of her, then why did he not want to face her? There was little that could shake him. He had already witnessed how brutal men could become. However, seeing Nora self-humiliate herself by eating off the floor had more than just rattled his principles.
    For some reason, her self-inflicted degradation had questioned his standing as a man. He ran a palm over his face and turned up to look at the sky. Stars twinkled, lighting up the darkness hovering around it. He closed his eyes, imagining it tinkling in that vast universe. 
    Why Nora? She was not the first woman he’d seen victimized in this dry, savage land. Then why did he let her affect him?
    She’s business. The faster I get done with her, the better.
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
    Morning broke, bringing with it a cool, fresh breeze into the room and driving out the staleness from the past night. Adam sat up, glancing at the other twelve men occupying the room.
    “You shouldn’t be sleeping here,” Basel complained as he sat down beside him. “It isn’t fair that you take up whatever little space left in the room when you got a room all to yourself.” He groaned, stretching out his arms. “Do you know that this here is the best spot in the room? To think you were sleeping so snugly when the rest of us were all cramped in that corner.”
    Adam chuckled at the shorter man’s light-hearted grumblings. Basel Kohistani was a good man at heart. But like most Afghan men, poverty had forced him into smuggling so he could provide for his large extended family.
    “There’s a lot of space,” Adam joked. “You could have just thrown your mat alongside mine.”
    Basel snorted. “You think the other guys are gonna be okay with that? Sleeping beside the head of Darul-Ilhaam?  They’d say I was sucking up to the boss again. That will completely ruin my life.”
    Adam shrugged, grinning. “If that’s how you want to look at it, that’s your choice. Otherwise, you could have screwed the lot of them and had